The 2026 Winter Olympics officially started yesterday with a glittering ceremony at San Siro Stadium, accompanied by festivities at the Games’ venues in the snow-capped Italian Alps. The event reflects the most geographically dispersed Olympic Games in history.
The ceremony’s organizers worked tirelessly to convey themes of harmony and peace, attempting to reconcile the city-mountain duality unique to this Olympic format.
Meanwhile, at the San Siro, performers wore outsized heads of the three great masters of Italian opera: Gisuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini and Gioachino Rossini, while American pop star Mariah Carey, wearing a white dress with feathers, sang “Volare” in Italian.
In this context, Italian President Sergio Mattarella declared the Games open after Kirsty Coventry, head of the International Olympic Games, said: “You remind us that we can be brave, that we can be kind, that we can rise again no matter how hard we fall.”
The complete collection of open competition locations for the next two weeks covers an area of more than 22,000 square kilometers.
The mesmerizing views and multi-city ceremony allowed sports such as alpine skiing, downhill skiing, bobsledding and snowboarding to be represented in the mountains without athletes and fans having to make the several-hour trek to Milan.
